Mystery writers Unmasking Larger Issues

Fiction is often a vehicle for confronting political issues, and the mystery genre is no exception. Former newspaper reporter Jennifer K. Morita’s debut mystery, Ghosts of Waikīkī, features an out-of-work journalist looking into the murder of a controversial land developer and explores timely issues in Hawai’i, including locals getting priced out of paradise. If, as Morita claims, “a good story is like mochi—slightly sweet with a nice chew,” then Leslie Karst takes the phrase quite literally in the second book of the Orchid Isle series, Waters of Destruction, a cozy culinary mystery featuring a feisty queer couple who swap surfing lessons for sleuthing sessions in tropical Hilo, Hawai’i. Follow Mud Sawpole from D. M. Rowell’s Silent Are the Dead as she investigates a murder while also pursuing evidence to permanently stop frackers from destroying the Kiowas’ ancestral homeland, water, and livelihoods. Large institutions also play a big role in Not Long Ago Persons Found by J. Richard Osborn, a debut novel about a biological anthropologist tasked with explaining (in a way that satisfies multiple political regimes) why the body of a young boy is found floating in a river with little to identify him other than pollen in his lungs from what has to be some warm green valley distant from the city in which he has turned up dead. Moderated by the decorated and beloved detective fiction writer Laurie R. King, this panel will explore mystery stories of the modern day as a voice against corruption, land grabs, and other forms of injustice.